all the broken glass is the same
by black-ostias
Summary: AU in which rick isn't happy with how his midlife crisis is playing out, the others are just not amused, and nothing's changed except daryl isn't merle's brother but his sixteen year old son, hell bent on breaking rick's self-control. in EVERY sense of the term. rick/daryl. it's not as cracktastic as it sounds, trust me. references: pistengyawa .tumblr .com/tagged/jailbait!daryl
1. prologue

**once upon a time i got a prompt on tumblr and long story short, i kind overreacted. i have no idea about how i'm gonna go about it, save that i'm definitely going about it, because it's just such a fun idea with so much potential and i don't know if i'll be able to do it justice.**

**so. jailbait!daryl. yes, that's a thing now. you're welcome.**

* * *

You don't know what it is about him that intrigues you. How he manages to look so young yet so world-weary at the same time? How every muscle in his body screams stay away yet his eyes beg for company, for a friend? How you know that he can hold his own in any fight, yet you still want to protect him and keep him safe? (Among other things. But you don't want to think about that, can't think about it, not without your stomach curling up in both pleasant and unpleasant ways because he's only four years older than your son, for Christ's sake.)

Daryl Dixon is a welter of so many contradicting emotions, and because of him, so are you.

* * *

Something's bound to happen. There's this weight in the air, difficulty in every breath you take the longer you go without Merle. He was your blueprint, the lenses through which you viewed the world, from how you spit at the ground to tossing around racist homophobic slurs, thoughtless as blinking. He was what grounded you, kept your head on straight. Ain't never gonna survive without me, so don't you say your daddy did jack shit for you.

But your center has shifted now, towards this ragtag group of survivors led by a lawman straight out of your old comic books. You can't quite pin him down yet, it's like trying to find the blue part of a cloud, but you don't mind.

Because something's bound to happen, and you can wait 'til it does.


	2. truth or consequences, and other places

**first ****off, this thing is written so awkward and painful because apparently i've forgotten how to write in third person now. every few sentences i'd start slipping into second person and only realize it after rereading augh what is my brain.**

**anyway. i hope it's not too shitty.**

* * *

The first time he sees Daryl Dixon, all Rick can think is: that was not what i expected.

He can't honestly say what he _was_ expecting — maybe a mini-Merle, someone just as obnoxious and nerve-fraying as his supremacist older brother, just as untethered by niceties. But that's not what he gets.

For starters, Daryl's young, so much younger than what Rick had anticipated. And though he doesn't look a day over twenty, the kid wields the crossbow like the weight of it is familiar, a deadly extension of himself. Not quite a man yet, but the framework's already there, set in his broad shoulders and flexing arms, waiting to be filled out.

And he's shockingly pretty. It feels awkward to have to use such a term, but that's the only one Rick can find. Dark blonde hair, fine-boned cheeks, a goddamn beauty mark at the edge of his thin lips, scruffy facial hair only barely salvaging his masculinity. The near-cherubic features clash horribly with his harsh drawl, with how he kicks at the walker carcass and sneers at Dale, bristling with youthful arrogance. Rick can't shake the idea that despite the narrowed eyes and the ink peeking out of his shirt, the whole swagger, it's not hostility but uncertainty that's the driving force behind this Daryl kid.

An uncertainty that's only sure to get worse now that his brother's gone.

Rick tamps down the guilt scratching at the walls of his heart, and sets about making things right.

It's Shane who has the burden of broaching the subject to the kid, but Rick ends up stepping forward anyway. He never did like others fighting his battles for him.

"Who're you?" the kid demands, finally taking the newcomer into account.

"Rick Grimes."

"Rick Grimes, you got somethin you wanna tell me?" Daryl's whole body coils tight in anticipation, braced for impact.

In response, Rick forces himself to relax, stay still, reminding himself that wildcats only chase prey that flee.

"Your brother was a danger to us all. So I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there." The snap of those cuffs echoing with more finality than the shots fired earlier, Merle's grating cocky laughter, then the terror he must have felt when he realized he was being abandoned for the elements to batter him and the walkers to pick him clean if the chain doesn't hold like T-Dog said it would. What supreme power must he have prayed to all through the night, alone and waiting to be spared?

Rick swallows past the lump in his throat. Relax, stay still. Make things right.

The kid's eyes widen, and only then does Rick discover that they're the same shade of gunmetal blue as his brother's. He turns away for second, swipes furiously at those eyes the way Carl does when he's so upset he cries.

"Lemme process this: you sayin you handcuffed Merle to a roof? And you _left_ him there?" The query ends as a scream, and that's how Rick knows there's no way to diffuse this situation with words alone.

He puts up quite a fight, but the kid's easy enough to take down, even with the knife and the rage. "Chokeholdin's illegal!" he snarls, thrashing about in Shane's grip like a drowned kitten, and Rick marvels at how he's able to sass mouth at a time like this. He crouches in front of the kid in spite of the exertion, the heat. This kid needs to see that Rick's on his side.

"I'd like to have a calm discussion on this topic, you think we can manage that?" Rick repeats this question more determinedly, watches the angry red on the kid's face and his quickening breath, nods to Shane to let him go. Daryl flops to the ground, ready to let out another stream of curses but Rick cuts him to the chase, drops down to his level again. "What I did was not on a whim. Your brother does not work and play well with others."

T-Dog suddenly interjects from the side, "It's not Rick's fault. I had the key, I dropped it."

"Couldn't pick it up?"

"Well, I dropped it in a drain." T-Dog sounds wearily apologetic, grim but determined to redeem himself to this kid, just like Rick.

The kid huffs out an exasperated breath, struggles to his feet. "If that's supposed to make me feel better, it don't."

T-Dog goes on to explain how Merle would be protected from walkers with that padlocked chain around the entrance to the stairwell. Rick watches the kid's face twist up, and tells him firmly, "It's gotta count for something." It has to. Even if he doesn't believe Merle's safe like T-Dog does, it has to.

Daryl rubs away another errant tear, groans, "Hell with all y'all. Just tell me where he is so's I can go get 'im." He doesn't sound livid anymore, just downtrodden and older than he should be, wanting his brother.

"He'll show you," Lori says, cool and quiet as a blade between the ribs. "Isn't that right?"

Rick wonders if he should change his mind while he still can, but one more look at the kid's clenched fists and his teeth sunk into his lower lip convinces him.

"I'm going back."

* * *

The uniform's still a bit damp, but Rick slips it on anyway. It provides familiarity, purpose, the hope that maybe the world can still salvage what's left, that Merle Dixon is still alive and won't try to take Rick's head off once they get him free.

Shane pulls him aside just before they leave. "I don't like this," he sighs, thumbing the four leftover Python rounds into Rick's palm. "Despite what's at stake, the odds ain't too good for you, man. All this for a damn redneck and some guns and a walkie?"

"That redneck has a kid brother he needs taking care of. And you know the rest." Rick clasps the back of Shane's neck, pulls him into a one-armed hug that burns with comforting warmth through his side. "You be careful."

Shane grins ruefully, roughs his hand through Rick's hair. _"You_ be careful. I won't go through nearly losing my buddy again."

* * *

It's a long, awkward journey to what's possibly a suicide mission. There's no radio music to fill the silence because nothing rides the airwaves now. Glenn sighs and drums his fingers on the steering wheel every few minutes, Morse code and distress signals. Rick finally breaks the silence by telling him, "Sorry I got you in trouble twice now."

Glenn smirks, pops off his baseball cap to tousle up his hair. "Long as you keep getting me out in one sentient, non-cannibalistic piece, we're good."

Rick smiles, glances in the rear view mirror to check on the others. T-Dog's clicking the bolt cutters open and closed, scissoring the air. The kid's cleaning his crossbow with a faded red T-shirt, scowling when he comes across the littlest bit of grime. He really does know what he's doing, and cares for it like it's of sentimental value too.

As if he's read Rick's mind, T-Dog prods Daryl's shoe to get his attention, asks "How'd you get that thing?"

The kid starts, narrows his eyes at T-Dog like he's trying to figure out any ulterior motives. At length he replies brusquely, "My uncle gave it to me when I was nine. Couldn't really use it for a while, though, arms were too short."

Rick can picture it out clearly: a grubby little thing trying and failing to lift a hundred-pound crossbow by his lonesome, and he has to bite back his amusement. Glenn doesn't even bother, just snorting his laughter for a full two seconds before he realizes his mistake and clamps his mouth shut, stares at the road as if it'd crawl by faster if he willed it. But Daryl just frowns like he doesn't know how to react, and sets about checking the bolts.

The overpass looms over them, cutting across the sun and now the metropolis is in sight. Rick decides to try his luck at restarting the conversation. "And your dad? He teach you how to use it and hunt? That was an impressive bunch of squirrels you threw at my head."

He smiles over his shoulder to take the bite out of his words, and the kid blinks, an honest-to-god blush creeping down his face, staining his neck. And just when Rick's given up on hope for an answer, the kid says, "Yeah, he taught me. And if y'all think buttering me up'll make me forget what ya did to Merle, you're dead wrong." But he still looks oddly proud, like he's contradicting his own words.

Glenn finally takes a corner and pulls up to the old train rails just outside the city. The kid turns to T-Dog and glowers at him again. "He better be okay. It's my only word on the matter."

"I told you. The geeks can't get at him. The only thing that's gonna get through that door is us."

Rick wants to say _don't make promises you can't keep_, but keeps himself in check. There's never a time or place for that kind of words.

"Merle first, or guns?" he asks once they slip through the wire fence, and the kid snaps, practically vibrating with barely-leashed energy, "Merle! We ain't even havin this conversation."

"We are." Rick faces Glenn as they start walking. "You know the geography, it's your call."

As it turns out, Merle does take priority, and the kid turns a smug grin on Rick. "Told you." But there are fine lines of tension bracketing the corner of his mouth, the fierce need to see his brother again bleeding through, and for once Rick's glad that he's the one in the wrong.

There are no more walkers flanking the building, so they manage to get in through the fire exit. The department store's empty save for something that was once a young brunette woman, and Rick signals for Daryl to take it down. The kid lopes through the counters and aisles, silent and swift, and shoots the geek in the head after a few choice words for it. It's not that hard to imagine him tagging the deer back at camp for as long as he said he did.

The kid all but kicks the door down once they get the chain off, hollering his brother's name. Rick actually waits for a hoarse curse in reply, but then he sees the severed hand on the ground.

And Daryl starts screaming.

"Dad! _Dad!_"

* * *

Rick's still a bit stunned when Daryl rears around and points his crossbow at T-Dog's face, finger on the trigger. It's by pure instinct that he draws his own weapon, though he can see the kid's more terrified than irate. "Hey," he says softly, reminded of how he had to calm down the stallion that brought him to Atlanta, go slow, go slow. "Don't make me do this, Daryl."

After a long moment the kid relents and looks down, visibly trying not to let the tears that have gathered in his eyes fall. T-Dog breathes out in relief, and Glenn squeaks from behind, "Hang on, Merle's your dad? When you guys first joined us you said –"

"Was his idea, not me." Daryl lets out a shaky exhale, goes over to what's left of his brother – _father,_ Rick corrects himself, and it finally hits him, knocks him off his feet because he's just robbed this boy of his father at the expense of getting to his own wife and son, and what does that make him?

Daryl pulls out his rag and kneels to wrap it around Merle's hand. "I guess the, uh. Saw blade was too dull for the handcuffs." There's almost no inflection in his voice at all, though he grimaces at the mess. "Ain't that a bitch."

He stuffs the dismembered appendage in Glenn's pack, but Glenn hardly notices, insisting, "No, wait, why would you lie about something as simple as that? And – how old are you really? You said you were twenty-something, but Merle isn't even fifty so –"

"He had me young," Daryl says in a tone that warrants no further questions, and picks up his crossbow. "Musta used a tourniquet, maybe his belt." He starts following a trail of blood to the opposite stairwell, and Rick can't bring himself to do anything but be led for the kid looking for his father.

* * *

The lower level of the building must've been a bustling office of sorts, but now it's deserted, papers scattered all over the floor alongside two walkers bludgeoned in the head by a wrench. Daryl chuckles and restrings his bow. "Took 'em out one-handed. Toughest asshole I ever met, Merle. Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails."

"You can call him dad now, you know, the secret's out anyways," Rick tells him, and the kid just stares at him like he's been insulted in Farsi.

"That guy was never my dad. But he's kin."

Rick begs to differ, judging by what happened earlier on the rooftop, but then remembers the man he first met using walkers as target practice as if he had ammo and safety to spare, can't recall ever thinking for even a second that that man might have a single fatherly bone in his body, and thinks Daryl's right. Instead he says, "Any man can pass out from blood loss, no matter how tough he is."

There's nothing on this floor, but the next one presents them with a gas stove still burning, Merle's belt, and an iron with burned skin stuck to it. Daryl takes it in stride, better than Glenn at any rate, sounding smug as hell as he goes, "Told you he's tough. Nobody can kill Merle but Merle."

Rick sets the iron down, glad to be rid of it. "Don't take that on faith. He's lost a lot of blood."

But Daryl paces to the nearby window, and snorts in triumph, "Yeah? Didn't stop him from busting outta this death trap."

The glass has been broken, a bloody piece of cloth on the ledge the only thing conforming that these two incidents weren't separate. "He left the building?" Glenn hisses. "Why the hell would he do that?"

Rick pokes his head through the window, and there's the metal ramp leading out into an alley. "Why wouldn't he?" Daryl's back to his confident self, unmovable from his faith in his father's hardiness. "He's out there alone as far as he knows, doing what he's gotta do. Survivin."

"You call that surviving?" T-Dog demands as Daryl checks around a bit more. "Just wandering out in the streets, maybe passing out? What are his odds out there?"

"No worse than being handcuffed and left to rot by you sorry pricks," the kid snaps, and turns his razor-sharp eyes on Rick, accusing. "You couldn't kill him. Ain't so worried about some dumb dead bastard."

He's in pretty close proximity, Rick realizes a bit late, the ugly scrawl of the kid's mouth testing his already frayed patience. "What about a thousand dumb dead bastards? Different story?" he asks, trying to get him to see sense.

Daryl's lip curls up like smoke, an impatient sneer. "You take a tally, do what you want. I'ma go get him." He moves forward like he'll actually follow his father through the window, and Rick has to push him back by the chest.

"Daryl, wait –"

"Get your hands off me!" he spits, jolting back like he's been struck. From behind him Rick can see Glenn curse noiselessly from how shrill Daryl's complaints are, the noise rebounding. "You can't stop me."

"I don't blame you." Rick's the one to step into Daryl's space now. He can see exactly which lines will be carved into the kid's face if he survives to middle age. "He's family, I get that. I went through hell to find mine. I know exactly how you feel."

Daryl tightens his jaw, more than ready to say _fuck you_, Rick can see it pressing its snarling shape against his mouth, but he doesn't, swallows it back. So Rick continues, "He can't get far with that injury. We could help you check a few blocks around but only if we keep a level head."

There's a beat, Daryl sucking in his lower lip as he thinks about it, then: "I could do that."

The amorphous worry in Rick's stomach settles, dissipates almost completely. Merle Dixon may not work and play well with others, but it looks like his son does.

* * *

**okay so the reason why some of shane's interaction with rick is different is the show never gave those two a nice besties moment in s1. sure, the guy stole his wife and kid for a while and he's bitter that rick's still alive, but he's been friends with rick longer than he's been in love with lori (in the tv-verse at least, and i'm following that). plus remember the greene living room scene in s2? mm-mmm. you don't just brush off that kinda closeness unless you finally lose a few marbles.**


	3. things out there that'll bend your bones

**i'm really sorry this took forever, you guys. but it's extra-packed to compensate! i hope.**

* * *

The rhythm of Daryl's task gets to him, hearing his uncle Jess saying, _swing and hit, sonny, just swing and hit_, though that had been for lumberjacking and not splitting open human skulls. This geek's face is nearly rotted off and it's not a hardship to heft the pickaxe over his head, unlike when he had to do it to Michelle, or Bo, and the others he used to pass by every day. The wooden handle slips through his sweat-slick palms, but he drives it home easy. Daryl leaves the now proper corpse for T-Dog and Glenn to toss into the fire, breathing hard through his mouth because he can get used to all kinds of foul things but never the smell of burning fresh, too much like what Merle left sizzling on an iron for him to see.

Jacqui and Jim are staring, he can feel the dig of it at his back, and when he glances at them they're slow to pretend they weren't. The city folk occupied themselves with small talk as they worked through the night, and from Glenn (can't be anyone but) to Morales to Jacqui to whoever else, they all now know by word of mouth that Merle's Daryl's father, not brother. It's a small blessing, the fact that their sympathy wasn't directed at him for long, not when they were waist-deep in too many other people's graves. Daryl's arms still feel rubbery and there's a deep ache making itself known between his shoulder blades from thrusting a shovel into the unforgiving ground.

Out of the corner of his eye Daryl can see Rick Grimes trudging up the hill, back from radioing whoever the hell it is on the other end. Daryl thinks about taking fists to that self-pitying face until his knuckles are stained fresh red, until he can see Rick's teeth through his cheek. None of this would have happened if he hadn't turned rescuing Merle into a goddamn crusade, if he hadn't brought so many others along, if he'd let Daryl just take the chopper and go by himself, he knows he's always faster and better alone—

And then he takes another look at Rick and realizes that neither hell nor high water could stop the guy from righting a wrong.

Whether Rick's afflicted with a messiah complex or plain stupidity, Daryl can't figure out yet. He hasn't met many morally upright men in his life, and now that he has, he's hard-pressed to say if such a quality is an advantage or a liability.

Daryl stands and observes Rick advance on Andrea to talk some sense into her, and barely represses a snort when he sees the telltale glint of metal and hears the snick of a safety being turned off.

A liability, then, he decides as Rick retreats with his tail between his legs. That won't happen to him.

* * *

"Y'all can't be serious," Daryl tells Rick as a pulse of anger throbs through him, incredulous and overpowering. Don't have the balls to risk hurting someone's feelings even when lives are at stake. Asshole should've thought of that when he handcuffed Daryl's father to a roof.

"Y'let that girl hamstring us? The dead girl's" – Amy, lovely Amy who'd flirted harmlessly with him and ignored Merle's crass questions about her being jailbait, Amy who once seriously asked if he could use his crossbow to catch fish and now will never find out if that's possible – "a time bomb."

"What do you suggest?" Rick asks shortly, pinching the bridge of his nose raw.

Daryl steps closer to get his point across. "Take the shot. Clean in the brain, from here. Hell, I can hit a turkey between the eyes from this distance."

"No. Let her be."

Lori, hushed firm voice skittering across the back of Daryl's neck, and he watches Rick and Shane trade exasperated looks, their silence speaking for itself.

Daryl can feel his knuckles grow white from where he's gripping his pickaxe, because this shouldn't be left alone, it should be dealt with, like how he dealt with his uncle staggering to his feet again only to try and rip him apart, and sinking his knife into Jess's temple was the worst feeling in the world, and Andrea shouldn't have to go through that.

But the sun's coming up, hotter out here by the minute, and Daryl has better things to do than pick a fight he'll just lose. He scoffs and goes over to the pile at the other end of camp.

Jim's staring ahead, one hand fisted in his jacket pocket, but it's not like the man doesn't do that, get lost in his own head. "Wake up, Jimbo, we got some work to do," Daryl reminds him, sets his pickaxe down to help Morales drag Eli, or what remains of Eli, to the bonfire.

"Whoa, hey, whoa, what are you guys doing?" Glenn exclaims from behind them, and Daryl ignores it, keeps going but Glenn's nothing if not persistent. "This is for geeks. Our people go in that row over there."

"What's the difference?" Daryl snaps. "They're all infected." He has to set the body down for a breather, and Morales follows.

Glenn cries out, pure hysteria trickling in, "We don't burn them! We bury them." His dark eyes gleaming with unshed tears, and Daryl wants to cut him, tell him to shove his sentiment where it don't shine but. He remembers how terrified the guy was yesterday, screaming Daryl's name as he got manhandled into a car, now with almost all his friends gone, and he lets it lie. He just can't resist launching the grenade from a safe enough distance. "Y'reap what you sow."

Morales says, all bitchy and tired, "You know what, shut up, kid," but Daryl isn't having it.

"Y'all left my father for dead!" he snarls, and it's the first time he's admitted this to the whole group of his own volition, and he savagely hopes that guilt builds like chalk dust at the backs of their throats. "You had this coming!"

And then it turns out Jim's been bit, and Daryl gets the barrel of a gun aimed at his temple for trying to put the man out of his misery. This day just keeps getting better and better.

* * *

As Rick hauls Jim to the safety of the RV, Daryl's made up his mind. He's already loaded Merle's chopper into the back of his pickup when Shane comes up to him, pickaxe threaded through his arms from where it rests on his shoulders.

"Whoa, where the hell do you think you're going?" There's an almost laughing tone in the man's voice, and the utter condescension makes Daryl clench his teeth so tight he can hear the enamel screech in protest.

He chucks his knapsack into the back a little harder than necessary. "Finding Merle."

The mirth drops off Shane's face so fast, invisible hooks yanking downwards. "Kid, do you even have the faintest idea as to where he'd go? Or if he isn't dead in a ditch from blood loss, dehydration, a walker attack? Are you really that stupid as to beat those kinda odds?"

The insult to his intelligence hits Daryl in the face like a slap, and he balls his hands into fists, spits back, "Y'all are the stupid ones! Trustin us and layin out a fuckin welcome mat and a spot in this camp when we was gonna rob ya blind?"

And it's true, too. Merle had certainly laid it on thick to get the menfolk's guard down, spinning a sob story about how desperately he needed to take care of his little brother. (Come to think of it, it must've been all the weed Merle was smoking that day that led to the weird cover-up and the onslaught of charm.) The ladies had taken one look at Daryl and cajoled the rest of them into letting the Dixons stay.

So Merle had joined the run to the city to leave the others behind, thin out the defending forces, and look how magnificently _that_ backfired.

Daryl knows he should never have brought this up. Shane's face is pretty much worth it, though. "You son of a bitch, c'mere!" He grabs Daryl by the back of his neck as if he's a naughty mongrel pup that needs disciplining, yanking him unceremoniously to the RV. Daryl tries to kick and claw his way free, but Shane's already hollering for Rick.

Rick emerges, already reaching for his holstered gun by instinct, and Daryl huffs. This threatening him with bullets tactic is getting old fast.

"What is it, what –"

"Him and his good old dad, the one you risked your neck for? They were gonna rob this camp, and now that he's lost his partner in crime he's hightailing it out of here." Shane doesn't even bother masking his razorblade scorn, his hold relentless, and Daryl growls, manages to twist away. Rick turns to Daryl, his eyes wide with shock for a moment, then carefully shuttered, impassive.

"...is that true?"

Daryl resists the urge to shuffle in place. Rick's benevolent air never fails to unnerve in a disturbing, effective way. He's already dug his hole, he might as well make it a little deeper, and he smirks at the unfortunate choice of metaphor. "Yeah. So o'course you won't want me around now, huh."

Shane grows livid, hissing, "Not before we bend a few bones on you, motherfucker –"

"Let it go, Shane." Rick turns his gaze on Daryl again, not missing a beat. "You were gonna. But it didn't work and now here we are. Either we give you enough supplies and let you go on a wild goose chase for your father, or you stay and do your part. We're spread thin enough as it is. I'd really not have your blood on my hands either way. So which is it?"

He sounds so matter-of-fact about it, and Daryl marvels. Strange creaking feeling in his ribcage, and no one's ever given him the time of day quite like this, let him have a say in his fate. His voice, when he finds it, is normal enough, though. "M'better on my own." He stumbles over a kind of huffing laugh. "But I'm stayin. Ain't got enough gas for a long run anyway."

Rick pauses, the hint of a smile crimping the corner of his lips, and nods once. "I'll hold you to that." Then he's striding away, motioning for T-Dog to help him create more holes, because apparently all the existing ones _still_ aren't enough.

Daryl blinks after him, made sluggish by the sun, and suddenly Shane's up in his face, an ugly sneer twisting his mouth like barbed wire.

"Now listen here. Rick may trust you but only because he wasn't around to see the shit you always sling around. You daddy ain't here to protect you no more. You try anything remotely fishy, I shoot you. Understand?" He smiles without waiting for an answer, saccharine-sweet. "Alright. You still got work to do."

His pickaxe is shoved roughly into his hands again, and Daryl swiftly gets pissed off. "Look at you. Tryna salvage what's left of your ego now that Rick's gone and stole your leader role. Stole his girl and kid back too, and ain't that sad."

If the muscle jumping in Shane's jaw is anything to go by, Daryl's hit exactly the right nerve, and he wants to cackle madly when all the guy can fire back is "Fuck you."

Daryl turns heel, throws a careless "You wish, asshole" to the wind and doesn't bother looking back.

* * *

Ed Peletier's carcass is as unglamorous as his living meatsuit, a skin he took off whenever he raised a hand to his wife, one that he now will never wear again. Daryl's gladly ready to drive the pickaxe into his head at least twice for good measure but then:

"I'll do it. He's my husband."

For a moment Daryl wants to say no: Carol's face is the most pathetic of all of them, small thin face smudged with dirt, tear tracks running through them like rivers on a desolate landscape. Then he thinks about how every bruise he ever glimpsed on her might have been meant for her daughter, and he hands it to her, steps back.

He doesn't know if he should leave, or say something, so he does neither, just watches Carol's twig fingers wrap around the handle and destroy her husband, and he wonders if his mother would have protected him with the same vigilance from Merle's callous neglect.

He also wonders when the hell he can get a motherfucking cigarette again.

* * *

Amy and the rest are buried without much fanfare. Daryl takes care of his father's hand alone, in a secluded spot away from it all. Morales and his family head in the opposite direction, to Birmingham. And further down the road to the CDC Jim is placed gently in the arms of the forest to rest, or not rest. It's more familiar faces wiped out just like that, the comfort they brought with their steady presence gone, and Daryl's chest feels carved out, shredded as good as any walker could do.

"You're a good kid," Jim tells him, his face very white, eyes shining brighter than torches, and there's an unexpected lump in Daryl's throat, so all he can do is nod curtly and walk away. He pretends not to feel Jim tracking his every step to his pickup.

* * *

Smash-cut to five hours later, and Daryl holds off taking a shower for snagging the office at the very beginning of the hall, easy way out, and away from everyone, finally. It used to belong to some big shot, judging by the trophies and certificates lined up on the bookcases. There's only one personal item in the sea of credentials, a photo of some Hispanic-looking family with two little girls at a petting zoo. He doesn't dwell on where they could possibly be now.

Neither does he dwell on how strange the sight of a drunken Rick Grimes is.

Daryl all but barrels into the man when he steps out to take that shower, and Rick actually staggers back a step or two, mumbling _whoa_ and grinning like a loon. Daryl raises an eyebrow at the already halfway empty bottle of red in his clumsy grip.

"C'mon, don't tell me yer gon'finish that all by yourself." He's only in the moderately buzzed stage and would like to hit the pass-out-without-a-hitch stage soon. But instead of just handing the bottle over like the gentleman he's supposed to be, Rick gets other ideas. He comes close enough that Daryl can smell the generic soap, see how soft his newly-dried hair is. Rick tips the neck close to Daryl's mouth, and through some odd second-degree coordination Daryl gets to take a few long pulls from the bottle, his throat clicking painfully as he swallows. Rick looks poleaxed, staring back at him with this unfamiliar intensity that makes Daryl skittish.

He breaks off with a gasp, pats Rick's arm quickly with an "A'ight, hog it all to yer damn self" and scampers to the showers.

From one of the rooms he passes by Daryl can hear Andrea say "it's over, there's nothing left."

The water's approximately a hundred degrees but that's not enough, he needs lye and steel wool to scrape Andrea's words and Rick's heavy gaze away.

* * *

When Daryl gets back to his room Glenn is dozing off on the couch, and Daryl really doesn't want to deal with this.

"Hey, get up," he barks, kicking at the vicinity of Glenn's red sneakers, the laces still undone. "Get yer own room, for Christ's sake."

"Daryl," and he's mortified when Glenn drags his name out so much it sounds like a moan, "_you_ get your own room."

Daryl sits by him and pulls at him until he's partly sitting up, stabs his chest with a finger. "Fuck you, I was here first."

Glenn's head just flops against Daryl's shoulder like a beached whale, hair damp against his skin, blinking blearily up at him. His cheeks are still a little ruddy, and Daryl recalls his little challenge from earlier, smirks. "Goddamn lightweight. Outta my room."

And Glenn sways forward, kisses him like it's the next logical step. It's off-line, badly angled, shockingly warm and tender.

Not to mention Daryl's first kiss ever, and holy shit this is not how he imagined it would go.

He jerks back but then Glenn heaves himself half onto Daryl's lap, legs over Daryl's knees. Glenn pushes and makes little jabs into Daryl's mouth with his tongue, kind of all over the place, and his hands are screwed in Daryl's shirt, so Daryl can feel his knuckles on his chest and stomach.

It's actually weirdly nice up until Glenn starts mumbling in between kisses, "you're so hot so really pretty oh man daryl." And he abruptly remembers that this is Glenn, this is a _guy_, and he feels like he's walked around a corner smoking a jay and stepped straight into a police station.

Daryl can't get out of there fast enough.

He trips into the first empty office he finds, locks the door while working his fly open. Every breath feels punched out of him, and his mind keeps looping on the feel of Glenn against him deceptively small, soft.

He pushes that stuff away, righteously angry now, because Glenn wants to be gay, fine, whatfuckingever, but he doesn't get to be gay with his tongue down Daryl's throat. Thankfully, Daryl gets a hand on himself and it's girls, curved and sculpted and shiny-lipped, almost all girls save for Glenn flashing randomly past, and Daryl thinks absurdly, i've been infected, this isn't my fault.

Daryl doesn't want to think about Glenn. He's leaning hard against the door, his hand working fast inside his shorts, and he mouths messily across his forearm braced against the wood, wet bite searing on his skin. He's not thinking about Glenn.

He's thinking about Rick instead.

And Daryl thinks, _no_, and then, _no no_ _no_, because Rick Grimes is a man, a married man, this can't be happening, he's not that fucked up yet.

But Rick's hands are hard and rough, almost too rough scratching down Daryl's stomach, sliding under his belt. He's overeager, licking crazily inside Daryl's mouth, down his throat and across his collarbone. Daryl's gasping, terrified, his grip incredibly slick and hot and his hips jerking forward. Images crash together in his mind, Rick Grimes on his knees sucking a bruise at the edge of his hip, grinning up at him and twisting his hand just like this, so tight Daryl feels like he's dying. Then he's coming hard, teeth sunk into his lower lip to keep from crying out, finishing on a series of staggered moans.

Daryl slumps, his head rolling on the door, and he can feel his heartbeat in his temples, the place where his wrist is pinned against the doorjamb. The endorphin rush rages against panicked adrenaline and Daryl thinks he might throw up.

"No," he mutters to himself, and wipes his mess on the carpeted floor. His hands are trembling and stupid. "Ain't like that."

There's a floor-length mirror on the wall to his right. "That wasn't your fault," Daryl tells his reflection. A scared-looking kid blinks back at him, lower lip gnawed to hell and the color gone from his face. Not liking the sight of it, Daryl narrows his eyes, hardens his jaw, scowls with true determination.

"You ain't like that," Daryl says, a little louder, and it echoes slightly. He sounds pretty convinced.

* * *

Daryl comes to breakfast late on purpose, hoping to be the only person left. But everyone's still at the table thanks to their late night, T-Dog in his element, dancing around gleefully and prodding eggs into plates. Daryl's eyes are riveted to the nape of Rick's neck, where his hair's starting to curl up as it grows longer, and then to Glenn with his head in his hands, groaning about how he can barely even remember anything about what happened yesterday.

It's both the best and the worst thing that Daryl could have possibly hoped for.

After Jenner's livening home movie Daryl grabs an untouched bottle of whiskey (finally, some good stuff) and passes by his old room space to get his things, and finds Glenn already placing them neatly by the door. "Hey, man. Sorry I stole your room," he tells Daryl, sheepish and blurry-eyed and vaguely apologetic, but not for reasons he doesn't even know.

_Definitely better this way_, Daryl thinks, taking another shot of whiskey and not dwelling at all on the shade of Rick's eyes as his son teases him about being hungover, spun silver with warmth.

And then the power goes out.

* * *

**okay so jess isn't an OC, he's daryl's half-uncle from the video game, and he really did get the kid a crossbow for his birthday, which i forgot to mention in the last chapter. i'm making him merle's brother in this universe, and as for old man dixon himself, i got other plans for what exactly happened to him. but who the fuck cares!**

**i'm not all that happy with this tbh. i'm scared shitless about how i characterized daryl, so any kind of feedback about how i handled him will soothe my nerves a lot, thanks muchly.**


	4. his hands do not go to the moon

**sooo i forgot to mention in the last chapter (this phrase is becoming a well-used tagline) that glenn's not really gay or bi, just…lax on his choice of partners, now that it's the apocalypse and all? plus you _know_ sixteen year old daryl would be pretty enough to be mistaken for a girl. hmm-mmh.**

**and also, real life has been fucking me up, so i could barely drag myself through writing in this past week, even if it's now summer here and things should be peachy-keen, but whatever, not relevant. i'm not kidding this time around when i say that this chapter's absolute shit. i hate it. hopefully i improve in the next chapter.**

**season two hooray.**

* * *

Rick wakes up and for a second he's certain that they're still at the CDC, hard flat surface underneath him and his wife's body tucked safely against his. The fringe of trees above them sets him right, though, a hot tight feeling growing in his chest as he remembers what occurred just yesterday. His whole face aches, his eyes and jaw and the nape of his neck. Lori murmurs and rolls onto her back as he sits up, looking like she hasn't slept well either, and not because they spent the night in the back of a pickup.

Breakfast is canned peas, tacky and sticking to Rick's throat. Carl keeps nodding on and off beside him, a spoon clinging stubbornly to his loose fingers. A hundred and twenty-five miles before them, and already Rick feels the distance like it itches everywhere but he can't scratch. Sitting farthest from where everyone's huddled together to combat the early morning chill is Daryl, propped against his father's bike and swiping his fingers through his bowl. He's wrapped in something that looks more like an old horse blanket than an actual poncho, and Rick tries to imagine if the kid has ever owned anything in his life that wasn't secondhand, aside from his precious crossbow.

The walkie-talkie still doesn't pick up a signal, even all the way up on the roof of an apartment, nothing but white noise hissing viciously at him. Rick wonders if winging it into the brick wall behind him will make him feel any better, and he decides it won't. His sheriff's uniform, his hat, his skin, none of it seems to fit him anymore. Lori doesn't press the issue when he tucks the offending garments back into his bag, only kisses him feather-light on the cheek, and it gives him the strength he needs.

"We're headed for Fort Benning," Rick tells the group, and Shane is wearing a mild smirk, as if it's taking everything in his power not to say _i told you so_ with all the smugness he deserves. It's not a mean smirk, though, just teasing, and even reassuring in its odd Shane-like way. Rick's tempted to stick his tongue out at him like they're in kindergarten again. "How are we on fuel?"

Dale tugs his fishing hat onto his grizzled head. "The RV's pretty loaded, so you're welcome to take gas for your vehicles, but only so much."

"It'd be best if we maximize space," Shane supplies. "I'm willing to leave my jeep behind, ride with you, maybe, Dale?"

Rick thinks that there's a stiffness to Dale's smile as he agrees to that, but maybe it's just the old man squinting against the glare of the sun. T-Dog places the keys to his car in Rick's palm, gallantly hushing any further protests.

"I'll just join Andrea and Glenn in the RV," he says, his endearing gap-toothed smile showing Rick that there are no hard feelings. "You guys can take Carol and Her Majesty Sophia with you." He bows low to the little girl, and she grins into her oversized sweater, one of her few proper smile Rick's seen in all the time they've been together.

"M'takin the chopper."

The first words Daryl has spoken all morning, and already Shane is shaking his head no. "That'll make too much noise," he insists, and Rick can't help but agree.

Daryl shoots Shane a staggeringly unimpressed look. "S'the point. If we ever come across a group of those things, I can draw 'em away."

Rick glances back at him in surprise, because for someone used to survival the kid's showing a remarkable lack of self-preservation now. Dale voices Rick's thoughts, asking, "Are you willing to risk that?"

The corners of Daryl's mouth quirk up as if he's just as amused by the idea. "Better me than you, old man."

T-Dog and Glenn start siphoning fuel from the vehicles to be left behind, and Rick finds his feet carrying him to where Daryl is pulling his poncho over his head, flashing a piece of his stomach and Rick gets weirdly stuck on that. The spell broken only by the kid saying brusquely, "Help you with somethin?" and the skinny slit of his eyes are curious and wary, but not hostile. Not yet.

Rick can only hope Daryl doesn't work out exactly what happened last night, standing toe to toe and sharing a bottle of wine, thoughtless as breathing. This dream-memory of the flex of Daryl's throat, the sideways cut of his gaze, it's for Rick alone to bury deep, if he ever even succeeds doing that at all.

He clears his throat, says, "I never thanked you for letting us sleep in your pickup."

Daryl shifts minutely, just the idea of a shrug. "Weren't nothin," he mumbles, stuffing his poncho into his pack and slips on a worn leather vest with white wings bursting at the shoulder blades, another hand-me-down. "That all?"

"Are you sure about what you're volunteering to do?" Rick asks, and maybe there's a crack of color, blue and white, a flare of interest on Daryl's face for a split second, but there's no real way to confirm it.

"I can double back, long as y'all stay on the highway."

So matter of fact and reckless, and Rick sighs, wondering when exactly that combination became a foreign concept to him. "You don't have to do that. Risk your life."

Daryl studies him for a long moment, nothing in his expression, looking like a photograph in a magazine, empty like that. Then he says, "Just don't leave me t'rot."

Rick doesn't think twice about his answer. "I won't let that happen."

There's a beat, Daryl holding completely still as twin spots of color rise on his cheeks. He nods fast, turns away and swings onto his bike, kickstarts the engine and how something with such a small gas tank makes such a racket Rick will never know. He feels breathless, overheated, not sure what's wrong with his body today.

But before Rick can decode the raveling sensation in his insides, T-Dog taps him on the arm, tells him that they're ready to go, and Lori's mouth is sweet on his and he doesn't dwell of anything else.

* * *

Shane's found a delivery van filled with water gallons, and he wastes no time tearing one open and dousing himself until he's sopping wet, his high ecstatic laughter mingling with Glenn's, and maybe they've finally caught a break.

Rick is a fucking idiot for letting his hopes get that high.

It's such a huge group of undead that swarms them, maybe not as many as all those wretches in Atlanta but the fact that they're in open space, moving together as if with a purpose — it shakes Rick in brand new, cliff-edge terrifying ways.

_Like a herd_, he muses hysterically. _Sheep come to the pasture to feed._

So Rick can't blame Sophia for losing her way in the woods. But as Shane nods at him and he leaves with Glenn in tow, Rick realizes a second too late that he didn't really think any of this through.

Daryl doesn't bother meeting his eyes, just motions for him to follow and Rick does that, his Python at the ready though he knows it won't be much use. For all his crass behavior, when he wants to Daryl barely makes a sound, his biceps strung tight from the intensity of his focus, weaving his way through the grove with enough finesse that Rick becomes too aware of his own blundering footsteps, the heaviness in his limbs.

After a while, when it looks like things are going nowhere, he decides to break the silence. "Tracks are gone."

Daryl bends forward a little, squints like he's reading words off a page. "Naw. They're faint, but they ain't gone. She came through here."

"How can you tell?" Rick asks, genuinely curious. "I don't see anything. Dirt, grass –"

"You want a lesson in tracking or find that girl and get our ass off that interstate?" Daryl counters, not quite a growl but building up to that, and Rick doesn't press him, even though he hates the quiet looming over them like a bad angel.

They come across a walker in the steeper part of the woods, and through this low-level understanding of each other Rick distracts it as Daryl puts a bolt through its eye. It's easy to fall back in the routine of detective work, searching the suspect for clues, though he's never had to rip one open before. Daryl stops him before he actually gets to that. "I'll do it," he says, drawing a knife from his belt that's a lot bigger than Rick's meager jackknife. "How many kills you skin and gut in your life, anyway?"

It's supposed to be deriding but Rick feels it as more of a teasing jab, and he opens his mouth to answer but then there's a sickening _thunk_ and a freshly rotting stench that flays Rick's senses open. It takes everything in him to prevent his breakfast from crawling back up his throat, seeing as Daryl's completely unfazed by the whole ordeal, going to bury the knife in the walker's distended gut again. He keeps glancing at Rick too, a wry grin on his face, like watching Rick's contorted expressions of disgust is the most entertainment he's had in a while. His hair's darkened by sweat and dirt, almost a different color without sunlight streaming through, and Rick wants to push it into even more haphazard shapes, maybe tug a little.

"Now's the bad part," Daryl huffs, and Rick's startled out of his back alley dark room thoughts. Daryl starts sifting through blackened innards, tossing what probably used to be a liver to the side, and Rick can't help the low groan that escapes him when some intestines get torn in the removal process. Daryl doesn't even flinch, leaning closer and sinking his hands past the wrist into the carcass. "Yeah. Hoss had a big meal not long ago. I feel it in there." He scoops the stomach out, drops it on the ground and this time Rick insists on doing the job. His mind churns all possible ideas as to what they'll find, sticking on the worst: bits of a blue T-shirt, soft chunks of flesh, maybe a bit of blonde hair like Daryl's. But there are only the remnants of a woodchuck, and still no Sophia.

He sighs, pulls off his ruined gloves. "At least we know."

"At least we know," Daryl echoes, but when they march back his sweat-shined shoulders are curved forward, a perpetual question mark, still asking for a little girl even though all his efforts look to be a waste.

* * *

Lori finds Rick hunched on the roof of an old station wagon, rifle at the ready. She's trussed up in a ghastly orange blanket, and he has to smile when she thwaps him on the arm to get him to scoot over, wraps the blanket around him too. In her hands is a steaming bowl of something Rick's nose is too numbed by the cold to try and figure out.

"You pick the worst times to close yourself off," Lori grouses, but with a smile to take the bite out of her words. Her head fits perfectly in the dip of Rick's neck and it gives him a little peace.

He drops a kiss into her hair as he says, "There is literally nothing for me to say this time, I think."

"Then let me say it for you." She straightens again, touches Rick's jaw and her fingers are warmed from holding the bowl, her eyes deathly serious. "You blame yourself because that's the irrational, big-hearted man I know and love. You blame yourself even though when Sophia bolted you went after her without a thought, like she was your own. Everyone saw that, and what Carol said? Was just grief talking. She's worried sick but tomorrow we're finding Sophia, and you can stop beating yourself up about it and eat your damn peas."

It feels good to laugh and so Rick does, setting down his rifle after one last look through the scope. "I'm beginning to loathe these peas," he tells Lori, but licks his bowl clean anyway. Lori makes a face, complains that he's taking after that redneck Daryl, yelps when he tries to slobber over her cheek. They're both giggling like they're back in high school after a brief tussle, and Rick feels guilty again, though not for the same reasons as before.

* * *

Rick screams for Sophia with his whole body, not caring that his voice box now feels like it's been doused in burning oil, and still the church is a dead end. But he and Glenn drag the walker corpses out, let Carol pray in peace, and every word that falls from her lips just twists the spiked barb dug just under his ribcage. Carl is small and scared by his side, and Rick draws him close, tells him:

"We'll find Sophia soon."

The lie is sandpaper in his already parched mouth.

"Gotta move here, man," Shane says, the setting sun painting the side of his face gold. "These people are spent. There's only so many hours of daylight left, we still got a long way back."

Rick knows all this, as drugged with exhaustion as the rest of them, the same powerlessness. But. "I can't stop yet."

Shane starts talking faster, obviously trying to keep his temper in check. "We still got a lotta ground to cover, whole other side of the creek bed, so we search that on the way back."

"She would have heard those church bells. She could be nearby."

"She could be a lot of things."

There's glass underneath Rick's eyelids, the sting of Shane's implication. He can't consider that even for a moment, not anymore. "I can't go back. Her being out here is my fault," he says aloud.

Shane snorts, soft burst of frustrated sound. "That's great. Now they got you doubting yourself, huh?"

Shane's angry with him, the kind of angry that arose whenever he thought Rick was being marvelously stupid, and it's understandable. The query still comes unbidden, though.

"What about you, you doubt me?"

He never does get around to answering, but how Shane smacks him on the shoulder and how "me and Rick" rolls off his tongue so instinctively, that's answer enough for Rick.

* * *

Rick pours his heart out to a supreme being for the first time since he was eight years old and fidgeting in his well-pressed Sunday's best, and it still feels the same: like he's crazy, begging someone who wasn't there for a sign that things would be okay. But then the buck steps into the glade, its huge liquid eyes staring calmly after Carl's slow approach. Rick and Shane exchange wide grins, and all is right in the world.

And then Carl collapses almost at the same time the buck does, with an explosion of noise then a quiet thud, and Rick is screaming because his boy's precious blood is turning his clothes black, Rick's hands are slick with it, he can't make it stop. Shane is a rabid dog, howling, "Who the _fuck_ is shooting, fucking show yourself," brandishing his shotgun and a man materializes from the trees, rotund and white-faced as he stammers, "Please don't shoot me, it was an accident, I sw-swear."

Rick's drawing his pistol without a second thought, shoving the man against the tree, drowning out Shane's yells, the man's blubbering excuses. "Do you realize what you've done?" he cries out, the barrel of his Python snug against the man's cheek, he's yelling, "I'll kill you, I'll fucking _kill_ you, do you realize what you've done –"

"Rick." The desperate crack in Shane's voice finally grabs him, and Rick turns around to see Shane kneeling over Carl, gasping, "He's still breathing, he's still alive, he's alive, brother," and Rick drops the shooter, presses his ear to Carl's chest and there it is, a glorious heartbeat, and Rick only realizes he's crying when his vision goes blurry with tears. He makes a pained noise, an inchoate moan, his hands fluttering uselessly over his boy as he bleeds out.

"What do we do, what do we do, what the hell do we do –"

"I – at the farm I live on," and the man is sitting up, his eyes terrified but determined, "the man who owns the place is a doctor, we can go there."

Adrenaline drags through Rick, pumps acid into his muscles. His various aches and throbs recede for as long as it takes him to cradle Carl's body, lift him and start running in the direction the man pointed. The woods morph into fields with no end in sight, and every breath he takes skewers his lungs.

Shane's snapping at the man for falling behind, and they really can't wait. "How far?" Rick shrieks, and it's a half-mile, a half-mile, he'll make it, Carl can make it. He's crying out in pain, against his will in grunts and hisses, but he doesn't stop moving for a second, only to adjust his son's body when his grip starts slipping. Carl limp in his arms like Sophia's rag doll, and why can't he protect anyone anymore?

The doctor he's supposed to find, Hershel, he takes Carl, and he's going to make everything okay. Bizarre catatonic hysteria, and Rick laughs to himself even as he throws the random dramatic-sounding words together. He wanders out to meet Shane, and Carl's shooter asks after him but Rick can't answer, his mind fuzzed over and body dense as slag. He's never felt anything else.

Shane breaks him out of his trance by wiping a towel over his face. "You got blood, man" he says, sounding worse than Rick feels and it's almost unthinkable. He presses the towel into Rick's hands, gentle as a mother. _Lori_, Rick finally thinks, and the tears start welling up again.

"My wife doesn't know," he tells Hershel and his group, and Shane shushes him, soft nonsensical words of comfort in his ear, grasping his neck tightly as his shoulders tremble with pathetic whimpering sobs.

Morgan and Duane gone from the radar. Sophia missing. Carl wailing and in pain, Carl as still and pale as the sheet he's lying on. Rick's list of sins are growing longer and longer. Now he knows that the Christ carving looked upon him with scorn.

_mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. i__'__m so sorry, darling._

"Lori has to be here, Shane, she has to know," Rick says, feeling drained and boneless and helpless, the worst way to be.

Shane nods. "Okay, I get that. I'm gonna handle it. But you gotta handle your end." His voice is a beacon and Rick can finally find his way to salvation now, be strong for Carl because Shane tells him he needs to be. Shane cups the side of his head and it's the easiest thing for Rick to bump his forehead to Shane's and close his eyes, soak up his best friend's faith and love.

They'll be alright. They're making a way to fix this. Lori will be here soon, and Daryl would've found Sophia by now.

They'll be just fine.


	5. interlude i:all this hum and awful noise

**there's no excusing the craptasticness and lateness of this chapter! *hides face* it was supposed to be longer but my word processor ate it and i had to retype all i remembered in three hours so that's that. XP more happenings and proper shenanigans will happen in the next update, i swear on all the saints. (and by saints i mean one macmanus family, welp.)**  
**many thanks to MK who talked me through my internal bullshittery.**

* * *

T-Dog has always been a little clumsy. Not exactly the kind that constantly warranted well-natured teasing and mockery, just the kind that made him, well. Silly, if only to his perception to himself.

Back when the world was still sane, he wouldn't realize that he had a bruise on his shin or a scratch on his arm if someone didn't point it out to him, and would only then recall bumping into a coffee table, snagging his pants on a chain link as he sneaked in with his buds into the basketball court in the early morning hours. He'd learned early on to focus wholly on the task at hand, and it helped when he started volunteering in his church's soup kitchen, otherwise he'd be chopping off his fingers along with whatever vegetables they'd be serving that day.

He forgets this very basic principle for one second and tears his heroin veins open on broken glass, painting a neon sign plastered above his head to point the incoming herd right to him, their free-for-all buffet.

_stupid stupid supid_, T-Dog chants over and over, stumbling against cars no better than bleached bones on a highway. He's blinded by agony, a vague secondhand terror overtaking everything else. He's going to die. It's a fleeting statement of truth, almost amazingly simple. Half a minute is all he has left in his lungs.

A walker comes veering into his direction, and he startles, trips over a carcass, almost like how he used to trip over pizza boxes on the floor of his flat, and he wants to laugh, or cry, something, anything. But there's just the resonating thrum of sorrow at the thought that he won't get to at the very least die on his feet.

Then the redneck kid appears, buries his knife through the walker's skull, and for one long moment T-Dog thinks that that blade's going into him next, finally be rid of the nigger that left his dad behind. But Daryl holds an engine-greased finger to his shushing lips, and T-Dog lets himself be manhandled to the ground, the half-rotting geek draped over him like a scarf. _Like camouflage_, he corrects himself, when he sees Daryl do the same, and he almost calls out, "you're smarter than you look, man," but then the walkers start trickling in, and he wisely holds his breath.

An eternity passes before the death rattles finally fade into the distance, and Daryl hauls him to a sitting position, slaps his faded red rag over the gushing cut. "Keep pressure on it, don't move," he says, stern like he's daring T-Dog to disagree, and props him up against a car. He darts off with his crossbow raised on the offensive, disappears into the maze of metal. T-Dog feels involuntary chuckles ebb from him at the same pace he's bleeding out, because what a world indeed it's become. What a world.

And there are screams.

He tries to stand up and find out what's happening, but Daryl's striding back, tight expression on his face and a blue T-shirt in his grip. "Who was that, what's going on –"

"Little girl ran off, walkers tailin her, but Rick's on it." His voice is oddly tense, muted in its intensity but there in the set of his furrowed brows. He starts cleaning away the blood and grime around T-Dog's wound, taking a lot more care than expected. There's nothing but ethyl alcohol to disinfect it, and it's like fire, like being branded.

"Oh goddamn," T-Dog groans through gritted teeth, and Daryl smirks, quit-whining shape to his mouth as he binds the shirt around the arm with electrical tape. T-Dog trembles, blessedly doesn't make another noise.

His mind wanders back to Sophia, and Rick, and he prays they're both okay. He's not the only one that deserves to be this lucky.

Daryl waves a striped button-down in front of him to get his attention. "Y'maybe wanna change?" he asks, and T-Dog looks down at himself, grimaces in agreement. The front of his plain grey shirt has grown sticky and marooned with blood. Then he becomes conscious of something.

"Hey, did you go through my pack?"

Daryl lifts an eyebrow, vaguely amused. "Yeah. That blue shirt is yours too."

No wonder those shirts looked familiar. T-Dog huffs, doesn't press the issue though he wants to. Instead:

"Thank you."

A beat, and Daryl's eyes widen at him slightly, those precious few millimeters that betray just how young he really is, and he nods fast, pulls out his knife again. "Gonna hafta cut this off ya, seein as you can't lift yer arm" is all he says, crumpling the hem of T-Dog's shirt between his fingers, tugging it away from his body.

T-Dog knows a roundabout way of acknowledgement when he sees one, and grins feebly, lets Daryl take care of him a bit more.

Andrea finds him some blessedly clean gauze and some iodine as they clear the roads, but come the morning and the midday sun beating off the asphalt, the throb in T-Dog's arm feels rooted in his very core. Time compresses, and he can't remember when he started babbling crazy to Dale. Something about not caring that he's been left behind to die, he's got what's coming to him. "Who's gonna be first to get lynched in a scenario like this?" he asks the old man, though he doesn't need to know the answer to that, because when he was in high school his second cousin once knocked up a white girl and a week later they found him dead from where the girl's lawman daddy dragged him behind his pickup by his cock and balls, where they'd tugged until they'd torn off and he bled out. T-Dog had retreated into church service after that, left his smoking and his violent life behind, but it's found him again and he's done fighting it. He's done.

That lovely fever blur again, and it's now approaching dusk, bits of gold clinging doggedly to the purpled clouds. Only half the group comes back, because Carl's been shot. T-Dog can barely wrap his head around it, dismayed beyond belief at their luck that just won't stop going bad. But he's too busy hunching against the RV, trying to fight chills only he can feel, a threadbare towel his piss-poor shield. And then Dale is coming over with a bottle of antibiotics, and he swallows the pills thumbed into his palm even if it goes down like sandpaper.

Once again the redneck kid has saved him, and it shouldn't surprise him anymore.

He hobbles over to Daryl right before he and Glenn leave for the farm. The kid's scrubbing furiously at the leather seat and muttering about oil stains. T-Dog ignores the SS insignia gleaming proud on the gas tank, taps Daryl's arm.

"Wha'sit now?" he grouses, not looking up until T-Dog ups and shoves the pack of cigarettes his way. He all but lights up, small gatorlike smile. "Man, how'd you know?"

T-Dog shrugs with his good shoulder. "I know withdrawal symptoms when I see 'em."

Daryl squints at the carton, snorts, "Marlboro's for pussies," but sticks one in his mouth and lets T-Dog light it for him anyway. He tries to give it back but T-Dog doesn't budge.

"S'the least I could do for my hero," he says, high teasing ring to it, and Daryl coughs, half a laugh, rolls his eyes.

"Your loss," he says as he pockets the carton, cranes his neck back to let loose a wavery smoke ring into the lavender sky, showing off, and T-Dog has to grin no matter how taxing it feels.

* * *

Daryl reminds her of Amy.

They can't be further removed from each other, true, despite the shared vulgarity, or the easy beauty of youth, or even the charred yellow hair.

No, it's the stubbornness, something not quite blind faith but cemented deep enough within the bones. "Am I the only one Zen around here?" Daryl grumbles after looking straight at Carol and insisting that her little girl would be just fine, and Andrea hears her sister's six-year-old voice claiming _come on, andy, if we stay up we can catch santa coming down the chimaninny._

The kind of all-encompassing conviction that's a little hard to not get caught up in, something she desperately needs right now.

"I don't know if I want to live, or if I have to…or if it's just a habit," she tells him, and it's true. Her lungs expand freely, her pulse careens madly when she stares death in its rotted eye sockets twice, but there's a horrible emptiness in her that was only made clear when Amy left her in this world alone. She looks Daryl in the eye and sees no judgment or pity, just. Understanding. The barest nod, and an arrow to the dangling walker's head for her troubles. A mammoth weight feels lifted from her with every step of the way back.

"What was that blue stuff in Merle's bag of goodies?" she asks him, partly because she wants to fill the silence, partly because she's been wondering ever since she saw so many drugs in one place that wasn't a college party.

"Why, you plannin on getting high?" Daryl counters with a smirk she doesn't need illumination to see. "S'crystal."

Huh. "I've never seen it come in that color before."

Daryl shifts his torch to his other hand, blaring light bobbing off the treeline. "'Cause it's a real kicker. Merle ran the dealings in mosta our area for the two guys who cook it so he'd get his personal share cheaper. Made me his delivery boy, sometimes." He aims the flashlight Andrea's face again and she winces, solid white behind her eyes for a full second before she swats it away. "So you been round hard drugs b'fore."

It's not a question, and she smiles, remembering another time, a fucked up young woman with nowhere to vent her frustrations but through trying everything she could get her hands on. "Of course; why do you think I became a lawyer?"

He actually laughs, and it's a pretty sound. Andrea doesn't realize she's observed this aloud until she hears a strangled noise and points her flashlight at him, finds him looking back all guarded and watchful. There's a visible blush on his face, almost funny to see with how hardass he acts all the time, and again with Amy's soft giggle, "he looks so _young_, do you think he's even legal," the day he stepped into the camp, and she can't help the surge of protectiveness after that, this boy like an orphan out of a fairytale.

Daryl offers to take watch but she shoots him down; his eyes are shadow-weighted and he's nearly dead on his feet, a grateful tilt of his head before he disappears inside the RV.

The dawn filters through the milky clouds and she finds a bucket of paint, dips her fingers in it to spell out Sophia's name on the dirty windshield of a car. The paint isn't water-based, and it gets on her blouse, a little tangled in her hair.

Right before they leave, she sees Daryl at the edge of the hill Sophia tumbled down from, fiddling with his father's plastic baggie, his gaze unreadable. Then he steps back, lets the whole thing fly, watching it arch into the air and land with a crack below. Andrea schools her face and looks away before he can catch her irrationally proud smile.

The farm stretches so wide, smothers all she knows. And Carl is out of danger, T-Dog already up and about to greet them at the door, and she embraces him happily, recalling how he sweated and cursed from pain the day before.

Daryl meets Andrea's eyes and gives her a tiny grin, and after a couple of seconds she realizes she's streaked faint white onto T-Dog's back.

In turn, she winks at him. It's a natural reflex, she thinks, to cheeky younger siblings in on a secret joke. It's just the way it's going to be.


	6. the hard, sharp outlines of things

**i apologize for the delay, babies. i got my left middle toe stubbed on a particularly vicious seashell while swimming two days after my bike squashed my right leg. i'm worse than t-dog in terms of shitty spatial awareness, but painkillers have been my best friend and now here we are!**

**i have no idea if this'll even fly, but i'm running with it. complaints accepted/anticipated.**

**my original summary ran this way: _like "my valentine has hollow eyes," but nothing as subtle as jumping rick's bones! mebbe when he's bedridden he'll *SPOILER* the guy?_**

**i decided it was a tad unprofessional.**

* * *

Carl's motionless against the white cloud of the bed sheets, the only sign of life his narrow chest rising and falling. But he doesn't look as bad as Daryl imagined he'd still be. His father's the one who actually looks worse for the wear, face all haggard and worn, new lines on his forehead. It makes something wrench in Daryl's chest, the way Rick looks eroded and numb even in sleep, one hand still curled under his chin.

Daryl's never been to anyone's sickbed, or dealt with anything like this, period. No clue as to the etiquette required in such a situation, so he settles for rapping swiftly at the doorframe, and watches Rick straighten up in his seat, blink at him. "Hey," he says, sleep-rumpled tone that makes Daryl shiver, for some reason.

"Hey," he mumbles back, trying not to scratch too awkwardly at the nape of his neck. "I found a farmhouse maybe five miles down from here. Looked like someone spent the night in one of the cupboards."

"Sophia?"

"Wasn't anywhere near. But it's real likely."

Long considering moment, and Rick sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. "Alright. There's no telling where she could've gone from there, but now that more of us'll be looking tomorrow, we can cover more ground quickly. You think you'll be able to point the place out on the map?"

Daryl nods, says hastily, "We can sort shit out tomorrow, man." Every minute Rick stays conscious is taking a year off his life, or that's what it looks like from here anyways.

Rick lets out a soft amused sound. "There's a 'we' now, huh?"

Daryl shrugs, fidgets. It'll take a joint effort to find Sophia, he knows, and now that he's seen firsthand how merely a flower and a story have brought so much comfort to this girl's mother, he's ready to make nice and cooperate.

"So you're sticking around?" Rick continues, and there's something in how he says it that makes him grin slightly, say:

"Got nothin on my schedule,"

and Rick's smile takes root in the rick dark soil of Daryl's young heart, somewhere it has no reason to be.

* * *

Daryl's picked a prime spot to settle, right where the forest begins, the whole lay of the land unobscured by trees and meddlesome people, forty yards away from everything and everyone. The one thing he has for company is a stone chimney that must be a hundred years old, all that remains of a farmer's cottage. He has his tent pitched, a dark blue two-man that's now for one, and his first thought is that he can finally beat off without Merle cackling out every lame innuendo known to man.

_thank god for officer friendly handcuffing that asshole, then_, he laughs to himself, half sincere, half slow boiling guilt. He spread-eagles himself onto his sleeping mat, watching the cherry of his cigarette glow steadily, the smoke waft its way out of the tent to join the stars, and he thinks about his father, left out in the cold.

And the picture in his head gets all morphed, fucked up. He wonders about Rick cuffed to the headboard of a tiny bed, slick with sweat and twisting helplessly beneath him. He wonders so much, with his hand down his shorts and the filter of the cigarette grinded between his teeth, small huffs of breath escaping him to echo too loudly in the still night. The crawling shame he feels after that is not easy to tamp down.

He wipes himself off as best he can, jerks the tent flap zipper down entirely to let the cloying smell out. He rolls over onto his stomach, waits for sleep to come.

Daryl has only been this way for four days, but it already feels like a lifetime.

Not much later, the brightening sky has him wriggling out of his tent, standing barefoot on the damp grass to twist his back, muted crackle-pops making him wince. He's hungry, but that's nothing new.

Rick's not wearing his sheriff's uniform anymore. Daryl's trying to parse out what it means but he supposes it just doesn't matter anymore. There's nothing much left of the old world order that makes sense to hold on to. Rick looks better now after a night of proper rest, not like a particularly gutsy breeze could knock him over if it tried hard enough. A button's been left undone on his shirt and Daryl can see the smooth dip of a clavicle under pale skin, the beginnings of gently curling hair. He all but barrels into Dale's RV, exhaling hard as he paws through the old man's closet for something to cover his threadbare tank top. He finds a long-sleeved flannel shirt that he knows once belonged to Jim, and it helps subdue his mood.

"Everyone's getting new search grids today," Rick says, pointing out the places on the map where Sophia could have gone. The teenage guy whose name Daryl hasn't bothered to learn yet comes up with his hands in his pockets, offering to help. "I know the area pretty well and stuff," he says lamely, and Daryl ignores him, pulls on the flannel shirt, unimpressed.

Rick's gaze is assessing. "Hershel's okay with this?"

"You let him help, don't you?" the kid asks, with a not so subtle gesture Daryl's way at the word _him_, and Daryl scowls.

"The fuck's that supposed t'mean?" he asks sharply, and the kid's muddy eyes go wide, turning back towards Rick, beseeching. "He said I should ask you about it," he continues, and Daryl scoffs, fastens his buttons and lets the matter lie, though something prickles him when Rick accepts the kid's offer.

Shane pipes up from where he's hobbled to the shotgun seat of the jeep. "Nothing about what Daryl found screams Sophia to me. Anyone coulda been holed up in that farmhouse."

"Anybody includes her, right? It's a good lead," Andrea counters, encouraging Daryl with a small smile from under the shadow of her straw hat. Rick nods in assent, adds, "Maybe we'll pick up her trail again."

The hope is growing in strength on Rick's face, the corners of his eyes, and Daryl gets more light-headed the longer he stares. He coughs, points to the ridge of land some miles out. "I'ma borrow a horse, go up here, take a bird's-eye view of the whole grid. If she's up there, I'll spot her."

T-Dog grins slyly. "Good idea. Maybe you'll see your chupacabra up there too." It's not malicious teasing, just a little jab that has Daryl burning from mortification anyway, especially when Dale expounds on that bullshit story he'd scrounged up on his first night at the camp. Rick is smiling at him all throughout the retelling, a small sliver of it but a smile nonetheless, and Daryl gives a silent cheer that Rick still has the ability.

An incredulous snigger from the kid ruins the moment, though, and Daryl snaps, "What're you brayin at?"

"You believe in a bloodsucking dog?" he asks, with an ill thought burst of teenage self-assurance.

"You believe in dead people walkin around?" Daryl shoots back.

That cows the kid, and he reaches for the shotgun Dale's placed on the hood instead, all stilted and awkward. No wonder Daryl keeps calling him 'kid' in his head. They may be roughly the same age but the difference is startling.

"Hey, hey." Rick takes the gun out of his reach. "Ever fire one before?"

The kid pushes his shoulders up, defiant. "Well, if I'm going out, I want one."

"Yeah, and people in hell want Slurpees," Daryl snorts, and is pleased when he sees Andrea hide a grin behind her hand. He slings on his crossbow and strides away. The band's starting to give, and he should find another backpack strap to desecrate soon, to replace this old one.

Hershel isn't at the stables, and Daryl figures he doesn't have the luxury of asking permission, when he can beg for forgiveness afterwards. He chooses a chestnut brown mare with a white stripe down her nose, and he smiles, strokes her smooth side, remembering the one grand time that Jess taught him how to ride a young stallion of the very same colors.

Of course, that was at a slaughterhouse and that horse was cut up for meat the following day, but never mind that.

Rick walks up to him as Daryl eases the mare into a steady trot. "You certainly handle horses better than I do," he says, same fond amusement on his face as before, and Daryl feels his pulse ratchet up in his fingertips, from where they're tightly gripping his thigh. "Did Glenn ever tell you how I got to Atlanta?"

Not really sure where this is going, Daryl shakes his head. Rick laughs and the sound takes him by surprise, squeezing off all of his air for a second. "I came across a horse after I ran out of gas. I could barely control it, but it was worth feeling like John Wayne. Let's just hope you don't end up like it did."

Daryl expected the little sideways admission of worry, after their chats from yesterday. He didn't expect the hand clasped around his knee, or the molten hooks burying themselves into his bellybutton at that, tugging downward. Rick must sense how Daryl's muscles have tensed under his touch, and quickly takes his hand away, coughs a bit. He looks about as chagrined as Daryl feels.

In Daryl's scrabbling attempt to look anywhere but at Rick, his eyes land on Shane, and the man is glaring at him with nothing short of murder.

He kicks at his steed's sides, and she nickers, continues forward. His neck aches from the exertion of forcing himself not to look back. There's an idea coming too close to the forefront of his mind, and he tries to shove it into a locker and throw away the key, but it's still glowing like a siren, despite all its improbability.

Because Daryl's not unfamiliar to the same skim of both a girl's and a boy's gaze on him, down and back up. He's seen how people are always surprised to find that they're attracted to this scrappy redneck kid, seen the widening of their eyes, the hopeful crimp in their mouths. Lord knows it surprises him.

And the way that very same look is beginning to grow in stages on Rick's face, it doesn't help that little siren at the back of his mind, wailing _what if what if what if_.

Daryl's not gay. He's just thinking about it, is all. It's not like he'll ever do anything as stupid as that.

And that holds true up until he kisses Rick Grimes ten hours later.

* * *

Consciousness comes back in waves, lapping softly at the banks of his pitch black mind. Daryl can only barely open his eyes to the canopy of leaves green as a parrot, sunlight winking through. His head has been hit hard enough that it doesn't feel like pain at all, just a distant confusion as to why he's flat on his back again and cold all over. And someone's crouched before his prone body, sneering:

"Why y'ain't pulled that arrow out yet, boy? Y'can bind yer wound better."

Daryl grins messily, big goofy thing he never wears anymore. "Dad."

"Ha! Now that I'm outta your hair, it's 'dad' again, huh? You a baby again? Crybaby cry, cry cry crybaby."

The old song warped under Merle's breath, and Daryl's elation melts away completely. He's only ever had two emotions when it came to his father, each the extreme polar opposite of the other. "Fuck you."

"Mm-mm. Yer the one fucked from the looks of it. All them years I spent tryna make a man o'you, this what I get? Look atcha. Good as dead. An' for what?"

"Girl," Daryl slurs, quiet and doomed-sounding. "They lost a little girl."

"Y'got a thing for little girls now? Better'n grown men, I guess. I ain't havin a Dixon be a faggot bendin over for a buncha niggers and democrats and _cops_, when y'ain't even lookin for yer old man no more."

Daryl snipes at him wearily, his heart not in it. "Shuttup. Y'shoulda stayed put." His tongue is sluggish, wet cement thick. "We wen'back for you. Rick an' I, we did right by ya."

"This the same Rick that cuffed me t'that rooftop? Forced me ta cut off my own hand? You that fucker's bitch now?"

He bares his teeth at his father, the specter of him that has both hands still intact. "I ain'nobody's bitch."

"A mistake, s'what ya are. Y'ain't nothing but a mistake."

"An' what about Jess?" Merle's half-brother, his half-uncle. The only person who ever truly gave two shits about him. "He a mistake too?"

"Oh, I prayed every day for a baby brother. But I never asked for you. Yer just some dumb bitch's problem that became mine when she offed herself. You was never s'posed ta be _born_, little boy."

Daryl moans in frustration, tears prickling his eyes, his father's voice as vivid as the murmuring river, but he knows it's only a memory. This has been the soundtrack of his life ever since childcare services dumped him at this man's doorstep when he was seven years old.

"I never even laid a hand on you like my daddy did, 'cause you weren't even worth the trouble. And yer new friends? Someday they gon'scrape you off their heels like the dogshit you are."

Merle's tight hold on his face is too real, casual in its devastation. He shakes Daryl gruffly.

"Ain't nobody ever gon'do the Christian thing and keep you alive 'cept me, boy. Ain't nobody ever will. Now up on yer feet 'fore I kick yer damn teeth in."

He had learned early on to always do what his father says.

* * *

Daryl wakes up shivering.

His pants have been peeled off, his boots and socks removed. Not being dressed the same as he was when he fell asleep makes him suspect that the whole thing had been a dream. His head still hurts. Maybe his head would always hurt from now on.

He doesn't know how long he's been lying there, on his side with the blankets bunched up to his chin, staring at the opposite paper-blank wall when Carol comes in. "I brought you some dinner," she says, setting a tray of eggs and beans on the side table. "How are you feeling?"

Daryl would roll his eyes if it didn't hurt too much. "As good as I look."

Carol smiles for some reason, sad and grateful. "You did more for my little girl today than her daddy ever did in his whole life. Thank you."

Well. Daryl toys with the cloth clutched in his fingers, for lack of anything better to do. "Wasn't nothin Rick or Shane wouldn't have done."

"I know. You're every bit as good as them. Every bit."

Carol's lips are butterfly-light on the side of his forehead, just under the bullet he got for his troubles. Even after she's quietly shut the door behind her he can't help thinking about his mother. Pale gold of her hair, getting carried around with the clothes in the laundry basket, curled up together on the couch because she'd sold the bed long ago. Words more remembered than the voice that had said them. _my daryl, how__'__s my daryl_, and he closes his eyes, so exhausted all of a sudden.

There's a knock at the door, this time, and Daryl's about to snarl "go away" when Rick asks, "Daryl? You awake?"

Rick! Daryl's heart clenches, stutters; he's in such a weird mood. "C'mon in," he manages to say, and Rick steps through, rubbing absently at his shoulder, mouth curving upward.

"I've got a bunch of ears on a string that I have no idea what to do with."

Daryl huffs. He didn't even realize that was missing from around his neck until Hershel was tugging his tank top off him to get at his arrow wound. What he can't seem to forget is Rick's screams when he dropped like a sack of potatoes, or his head lolling against Rick's sweat-damp shoulder.

"Gonna throw em away?"

"I already hung them on that chimney structure beside your tent." Rick sits at the foot of the bed, his smile growing more pensive. "You're gonna have to stay here a day or two more. Your camp's way too far for you to keep going back and forth."

Daryl's still a little rattled by the fact that Rick walked all the way out there at dusk just to keep his trinkets safe. "Nah, I'll make Andrea move my tent as penance for shootin me."

Rick hums as if to say good call, good call. There's a companionable silence before Daryl asks, "Ain'tcha tired of holdin bedside vigils?"

"Just wanted to see that you're okay. Not that you'd tell me if anything was wrong," Rick says without heat, right on the money. Looking at him is having some strange alchemic effect on Daryl, mixing with the head injury and painkillers and exhaustion. Rick's watchful eyes, his rough hands, the way his too-girly mouth shapes his gentle words, and all of it shakes through Daryl something awful.

He pretends to shift as he drags his blanket lower. "I'd tell you," he murmurs, wetting his lips a bit. He doesn't miss how Rick tracks the movement, the stymied bob of his Adam's apple telling Daryl all he needs to know.

_he wants me_, he crows in his mind, and with that he sits up. It makes him dizzy, a sloshing sensation in his cranium but he fists his hand in Rick's collar anyway, closes the space between them and fits their mouths together.

Rick grabs at Daryl's arm like he's trying to throw him off, his mouth opening mostly from utter shock but Daryl can roll with that. He sucks at Rick's lower lip, licks his way inside and Rick's tongue against his strikes sparks. This odd whining sound issues from the back of Daryl's throat, and he has to pull away, press his forehead against Rick's shoulder again, the breath knocked out of him in quite a different way this time.

"Daryl." Rick sounds broken, even a little bit confused. "You. You can't _do_ that. Lori –"

"The hell I can't. Thought the law don't exist no more." He can't spare his focus for anything beyond the physical, Rick's pulse thrumming against Daryl's skin.

Rick pushes him away, hands around his shoulders, holding him up and at arm's length. "You're acting like a child."

And Daryl just has to say, "Technically I am one."

Rick goes still. His face freezes and his arms tense and he stares at Daryl. "Beg pardon?"

And he has to add, "Well, sixteen, but if ya wanna stretch yer definition a bit…"

Rick's eyes are comically huge, but Daryl doesn't feel like laughing. "Daryl. You're sixteen?"

"Yeah. Gonna do somethin about it?" and his voice cracks like he's exactly as old as he is and he loathes it.

Rick seems to have shut down. He can't look at Daryl anymore. "Excuse me," he exhales, and all but flees the room.

The silence this time is unbearable.

* * *

That night, Daryl dreams for the first time in a long while.

He's standing in the middle of the tiny apartment where his mama died, and the flames are still everywhere but it's his fault. Everything he touches goes up in flames.

And instead of Mama it's Rick on the couch, still in those fucking handcuffs and nothing else. "All your fault," he rasps, his voice garish with smoke, his hair lighting up when Daryl runs his hand through it. "Daryl."

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Daryl weeps, and he's seven years old again, worthless little boy just like Merle said he is. The ceiling has caught, charred plaster crumbling and raining around them like ash.

Rick shakes his head. His skin is sluicing off his bones. "That's not good enough, Daryl."

Daryl's jolted awake and he throws up Carol's dinner all over the floor. No matter how hard he tries, the pain won't go away.


End file.
